The entire point of a smart home is to make life at home a little bit easier, if not more enjoyable.
One of the best places to start is by automating your morning routine.
Here are four ways a smart home can help you breeze through your mornings.
Getting a good night's rest is important, but just as important is how you wake up.
No one likes to wake up to a loud alarm, but waking up calmly to a gentle, gradual increasing light is more natural and will prevent you from being ripped out of deep sleep.
You can do this a few different ways.
Many smart bulbs, for instance, can be programmed to come on at a specific time.
And often you can choose how long it takes for the bulbs to reach the desired brightness.
Instantly, a couple of seconds, or even several minutes.
Create a schedule for overhead Lutron lights or LIFX bulbs in a bedside lamp to come on around the time you wanna wake up.
No one wants to peel off their sheets early in the morning and wake up to a chilly bedroom.
So to avoid this, you can set your smart thermostat to raise temperature about 30 minutes before you plan to get out of bed.
Like with slowly turning on the bedroom lights, this will help gently pull you out of sleep and make getting out of bed less jarring, or maybe you need the shock of brisk morning air to help you wake up.
If that's your morning trick, just set the thermostat to lower a few degrees before your alarm.
Who doesn't like a fresh cup of coffee early in the morning?
With your Smart Home, you can wake up to hot coffee every morning, and making it happen is easier then you think.
While they make smart coffee makers specifically for this, all you really need is any dumb coffee maker and a smart switch.
The one requirement for the coffee maker is that its power button is a toggle switch that will remain on.
Even after brewing has finished, this is so you can control its power externally with the Smart Switch.
Pretty much all Smart Switches can operate on a schedule.
But if you've got one that's compatible with Google Home or Alexa, like this Tp-link Kasa Smart WiFi Plug, you can tell your smart speaker to make coffee as soon as your feet touch the floor.
Hey Google, Coffee time.
[MUSIC]
Sure.
Turning the coffee maker on.
With smart speakers spread around your house, staying up to date on the news, weather, and traffic is easier than ever.
Using Alexa routines you can have Alexa play your flash briefing every morning at the same time, Or you can simply ask for it by saying away forward followed by play my flash briefing With Google Home and a Chromecast, you can play your favorite news updates on the TV.
Just say, okay Google, show me CNET videos on the TV.
And these morning automations are just the tip of the iceberg.
The more smart gadgets that you add around the house and the more you use them, the more creative you can get with how you use them each morning.
For more smart home tips and tricks and other how-tos, be sure to check out cnet.com/howto.
